Public administration proposing ombudsman’s recommendations be based on facts

I refer to the article titled ‘Ombudsman accuses civil service head of trying to undermine him’, published on the news portal www.timesofmalta.com (January 11).

The ombudsman’s office took a full 31 days to try to justify how the scrutiny of the public administration equates to an exercise in good governance and accountability while a call for more transparency and accountability on the ombudsman’s office part amounts to a “direct frontal attack” against this institution.

For clarification’s sake, the public administration has put forward proposals so that all constitutional overseeing institutions (and not only the ombudsman) should have clear, transparent, well-defined and publicly known procedures about their own standard operating policies along with the recruitment of staff (which includes consultants/persons of trust) into their fold.

The office of the ombudsman not only skirted but was oblivious to these proposals and whether these ought to be included in the legal amendments his office would like to see implemented in the Ombudsman Act.

Akin to the public administration, shouldn’t the constitutional overseers also have deadlines on how long they should take to reply to citizens’ cases? Currently, the public administration has been waiting for two to five years on more than 20 cases for the office of the ombudsman to provide a definitive reply to act upon.

Shouldn’t the office of the ombudsman have a clear policy to those seeking its services on what complaints can be investigated by the ombudsman?

Indeed, in 2020, a quarter of the cases submitted their case to the ombudsman without first trying to find a remedial solution from the public administration.

Should the office of the ombudsman be a customer care service provider or the overseer of the public administration?

The public administration is also proposing that the ombudsman’s recommendations are to be based on facts. The public administration has very clear instructions that recommendations submitted by constitutional bodies, like the office of the ombudsman, should be accepted and implemented as long as the recommendations do not go against the law or entrenched policies.

At a time when the ombudsman’s recommendations were left unheeded year in, year out, there were no utterances against the public administration. Nowadays, when the implementation rate of the ombudsman’s recommendations is entirely documented, made public and stands at 98 per cent, the public administration is being recriminated against as being offensive.

All ‘Governance Action’ publications are based on facts and are well-documented and the public administration will be more than ready to present Mr Speaker with the documented facts.

Paul Azzopardi, Director of Information – Valletta

Travel restrictions

Photo: Matthew Mirabelli

Everybody who travels regularly has realised the often nonsensical travel restrictions.

Consider the travel ban to African nations, for example. After the discovery of Omicron, the south of Africa was banned as a ‘reward’ for being transparent.

Meanwhile, many countries like the US, Germany, the UK and others acknowledged the fact that a travel ban cannot stop the virus.

When will Malta react and review its travel restrictions regularly or just decide to make travel to and from Malta dependent on being vaccinated and additional testing? Then we would all sit in the same boat.

Peter Stingl – Għargħur